


The Scent of Jasmine

by S J Smith (Evil_Little_Dog)



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 03:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_Little_Dog/pseuds/S%20J%20Smith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary:  Dream state is a bitch.<br/>Disclaimer:  Joss owns all.  I just play paper dolls with his characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scent of Jasmine

Most nights, he sleeps the whole night through. Some nights he snuggles in tight around Tracy, buries his face deep into her warm auburn hair, strokes her freckled skin and sleeps the sleep of the just or at least the young. He likes those nights. He likes the mornings even better, waking up with the girl he loves in his arms. Her sweet green eyes still soft from sleep, her hair a mess, her breath warm against his skin, open, trusting, loving.

He wishes he could have more nights like that but freshmen weren't allowed to live off-campus. And that while the dorms were co-ed, the floors weren't. Forget the rooms. Maybe next year, he and Tracy could get an apartment together. If they each got a job...and with their student loans and grants and scholarships, they should be able to afford it. Until then, they steal their time here and there.

At least they got to eat breakfast and dinner together; whenever the cafeteria actually had anything worth eating. Tracy couldn't believe what they could do to green beans and he still wasn't sure what the meatloaf was made of ("Should it be grey? I mean, really?"). Of course, Tracy - and everyone in his family, for that matter - believed he lived on air anyway so food wasn't really one of his big worries. Besides, there were always the vending machines on the floors and pizza to be ordered in. Or fast food row, just down the road.

Yeah, food wasn't necessarily a concern.

There were other things that occupied his thoughts.

Not just Tracy or classes or what it was like, living away from his family for the first time. How surprised he was that he actually missed Liza and Kathy, his sisters. That a cat wasn't sleeping in the bed with him, for the first time in, well, ever. That classes were tougher than he thought. Did he want to join a fraternity? Should he? Did he really like that screenwriting class? How practical was that, in the real world?

Then there were the dreams. He doesn't even want to think about them but there they were, vivid, horrific, complete sensoround. His own private movie of hell, going off in his head.

He can't remember ever having dreams like this before he started college. Is it really separation anxiety? He isn't sure. He doesn't want to talk about them, not with his roommate, Micah, or with Tracy. He doesn't tell his parents or his sisters. How could he? But there is something that niggled in the back of his mind, wasn't there a story somewhere, some SF thing, that wasn't from The Matrix, that your dream world is real and the one you thought you actually lived is the fake?

He isn't sure he likes that idea but once it popped into his brain, it didn't seem to want to leave. At his darkest moments, the thought that he is actually living a dream seemed so crazy it might actually be truth. There is so much that just fell into his lap - his grades, the scholarship, the great college, the family, the girl. He literally lives the life of Riley and he knows it. His friends are always talking about it, his charmed life, how lucky he was. "Rub him one time for luck," Tracy'd said once, going in on a test that she wasn't sure she'd do well on and she came out of it with an A+.

Maybe that's why he started getting the dreams, something to balance everything else. But they seemed so real; the sun blotted out of the sky; a creature made of stone; a place where there was only himself and a man he called Father, not his dad, living like wild animals trying to survive an incredibly hostile environment.

He sometimes dreams of an old building, a once-glorious hotel and the strange people who inhabit it. He wakes up crying over the beautiful woman who lives there, the one who loves him and frightens him. Is she a friend? A foe? And the man who watches, with eyes like onyx, who's expression is never what he expects - is that disappointment on his face? Love? Hatred? Joy?

He'd wake some mornings, after one of these dreams, still hearing the sounds of waves slapping against the hull of a boat, the scent of the sea strong in his nostrils. He could hear the dark-eyed man's voice saying, "I love you, son." The beautiful woman rides him through his dreams of fire, her gift none the less sweet though the world is ending around them. Death stalks him on all sides. Someone says magic words (he doesn't believe in magic) and another beautiful woman (why are they both brunettes when Tracy is a redhead?) fights him to a standstill and he knows she'd have fought him to the death if she'd had to.

The dark-eyed man prowls his dreams, a wolf just beyond the light of the fire, the fluid sweep of him like the tug of a magnet. He doesn't want to look but he always found himself staring into the darkness rather than watching the light. Is he supposed to go into that forest? Search out this man? He knows what his psych prof would say, that the dark-eyed man is just an expression of his own animus. But he wonders, sometimes. Would he have created such a man to be in his dreams? And if the dark-eyed man is a creation, what brought on the brunettes? Lust?

Well, maybe he could go along with that, he is a man with a man's urges. It doesn't explain the dreams of hunting the dark-eyed man through a city sewer, at the whim of another woman. Is it her whim or his desire? And why is this woman so absolutely terrifying, with her face of decay and maggots, and still such an inspiration to peace and love?

He remembers the dream where the woman ("Her name is like a flower but I don't know why") is born in a bright light. He remembers fighting with the dark-eyed man. In his dreams, he remembers it all, the battle beneath the city, the metal coffin on the ocean, the world where demons lived.

Sometimes, he wakes in a hotel room.

It's happened twice before, this waking. He opens his eyes and sees furniture he doesn't recognize. Nothing is where it should be. But the room smells sweet and familiar and he rises. He adores the scent of jasmine. It smells like (monsters) love. Peace. ("Connor, don't do this. She's innocent. You can't kill her, Connor.") He looks back at the girl in the bed. She's beautiful. Dark haired, like (Cordy, like Faith) the woman in his dreams. He leans over to plant a soft kiss on her mouth. Her eyes stare at the ceiling, flower petals stick to her (bloody) skin.

Jasmine needs food to live.

His dreams tell him that. They tell him she's always hungry. She needs the blood. The souls. She needs so much. He might have to find another girl, sooner than he thought. He scoops his hair from his face, reaches for his back pack. Something in him thrums at the idea of finding another girl. His hand is on the doorknob but he can't help but look back again, at his girl. Jasmine's girl.

The door bangs open and he falls back with a shout, dropping to his knees as a man stalks into the room. He prowls like a wolf, dressed in the shadows of the night. He seems cold; aloof. He says, his voice low, breaking, "Believe me, Connor, it wasn't supposed to happen this way."

He recognizes the big hands, the dark clothes, the eyes like onyx. The man's expression isn't what he expects.

"You've murdered three girls, Connor, and I can't let it go on."

He smiles. "Jasmine's hungry."

"Jasmine's dead. You killed her. You destroyed her. Just like you've killed these other women."

"She's alive. She speaks to me." Oh, that thrum rises up in your body, makes you smile at the man. "She says you're afraid of me."

His unexpected smile is terrible. "No. I love you." And he moves, striking like a panther, his big hands catching his son's face gently but firmly, staring down into those blue eyes, like pools of moonlight, before snapping Connor's neck.

The boy's smile is forgiving as Angel cradles him close, burying his face in the boy's hair, drinking in the long-lost scent of his son. He holds him until he feels the approach of the sun, only then laying the boy down on the bed, next to the murdered girl.

He hates the scent of jasmine, he thinks and his eyes are dry as he leaves the hotel room. 


End file.
